Konami Urges Players to Disarm Nukes in ‘Metal Gear Solid V’

began a new event this past weekend, and it might be the final salvo in creator Hideo Kojima’s legacy of weaving anti-nuke messages into the Metal Gear series he created. A week after Konami’s nuclear disarmament call for “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” players, the developer revealed the current count of nukes in player bases.Although the secret ending apparently leaked back in September (you can see the video on IGN’s Metal Gear Solid V Easter Egg page), Konami has now released the instructions on how to unlock the event for real, and it’s not going to be easy. To trigger the secret nuclear disarmament event: Certain conditions related to nuclear proliferation must be met on the regional server for your corresponding gaming platform (PS4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC): All nuclear weapons on the regional server corresponding to your console or platform must have been dismantled. Think again: Konami has unlocked the game’s previously hidden “Nuclear Disarmament Event” for play, announcing the conditions required to unlock it, listed below: If nukes are developed by a player after that, the third and fourth conditions must be once again fulfilled.

Condition 3 is presumably the reason the mission has been unlocked, though that’s not entirely clear and Konami hasn’t provided an answer to the question yet. Nuclear weapons have been a part of the multiplayer portion of The Phantom Pain ever since players discovered they could build nukes to protect their bases from invasion from other players. Each console has its own tally of total nukes, and the results are as follows: PlayStation 4206, PlayStation 3: 153, Xbox One: 40, Xbox 360: 39, Steam: 12081. The event was first discovered by curious PC gamers digging through the game’s files shortly after the game’s September release, including the mission’s cutscene, which is available on YouTube if the idea of waiting through the conditions listed above seems like too much. Fans speculated that in order to trigger this video, all nukes had to be disposed of in the game’s online Forward Operating Base mode—a lofty, if not impossible, feat, considering the number of players online.

Getting a whole server of people to work together toward a goal is difficult when there will most certainly be some players working against the goal just because they can. Konami revealed that current nuke figures stand at 206 on PlayStation 4, 40 on Xbox One, 153 on PlayStation 3, 39 on Xbox 360, and a staggering 12,081 on Steam.

The premise of the series, after all, is based on the threat of a walking tank that can trigger nuclear war, the titular Metal Gear, a weapon reserved for the worst villains and the most cynical sort of realpolitik. It’s worth noting that the PC version has more than 40 times as many nukes as other servers not due to a higher player base but for the same reason players were able to get access to the hidden files in the first place – the PC is a much more open platform and is ripe for exploitation. Before I sat down and began Phantom Pain, I jumped onto YouTube and watched a fantastic summarization of all the games major plot points and characters.

In IGN’s review, we said that it’s a “gameplay marvel, rewarding intelligence and creativity in a way few games do.” Matt Porter is a freelance writer based in London. There is no clear reason why the numbers have dropped drastically, but as Forbes speculates, it could be that players have moved on from MGSV to play many of the recently released titles, and those who are left playing the game are finding it easier to go around disarming other players’ bases while they are defenseless. It’s a game that offers players a chance to build a techno-industrial war machine, profiting off of the unstable politics of the late Cold War and using them to pursue personal revenge. Following the conclusion of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, Big Boss (BB) wakes up in a hospital bed to to the sound of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” playing on a nearby radio.

This event could be seen as a commentary on how impossible it is to completely rid the world of nukes, but also how, as impossible as that goal may be, it is a goal worth pursuing. Soldiers are piling into the building and murdering everyone that they see, to make matters worse BB is still weak from his 9 year coma and barely able to walk. After some sneaking around, BB finally escapes the hospital in an ambulance, he is chased by the mysterious supernatural duo, who are hurling everything they can at the ambulance, eventually causing BB to wreck. Ocelot explains to you that he is now part of an organization called ‘The Diamond Dogs’ and that they are are trying to rebuild the army that they lost at Outer Heaven with your help. I realized that the story had done something to me that I hadn’t experienced in a long time… It filled me with anticipation to play this game non-stop all the way through.